Random EV thoughts.....

McGiver

IrishHomer wrote: »

Sky News have a story claiming a new battery invented to charge in five minutes

http://news.sky.com/story/new-electric-car-battery-can-be-fully-charged-in-five-minutes-12192253

MJohnston wrote: »

The Guardian article gives better, though still not enough, detail:

Both articles are not properly digested and are not getting it right.

Proper article directly from the source by someone who knows about the subject is here:
https://www.electrive.com/2021/01/19/storedot-to-showcase-sample-cells-for-potential-partners/

They are aiming for 300 km in 5 minutes. That's something like 500 kW charger, well based on the amperage and voltage etc.

EDIT: They are saying 10C charging in the video and demonstrated that with a scooter battery.

ELM327 wrote: »

100 miles / 160km in 5 minutes in 2025?
You can nearly do that today in a model 3 at a V3 supercharger.

300 km / 5 mins is at least double than what Tesla can do at the moment.

Saying that they downgraded their goal from 300 miles to 300 kms, so let's see if they can meet that objective.

liamog

Saw on the ID Facebook group today, May is the expected reveal of the ID.4 GTX and the ID.5 (ID.4 Coupé) in October.

unkel

McGiver wrote: »

300 km / 5 mins is at least double than what Tesla can do at the moment.

Well over double. That said, how important is this superfast charging really? It's nice to have for sure but after driving for 300km you'd need a break anyway. You'd barely make it to the toilet and back in 5 minutes. And if you want a coffee / snack too it would take at least 10 minutes and that's before stretching your legs or eating / drinking.

Anything quicker than 15 minutes per 300km wouldn't really add much value for me

ELM327

I agree Unkel. I think we need to shift the focus from adding super fast charging at the start of a session, to maintaining high speeds throughout - albeit slightly lower than peak.

Take the Taycan and the etron. If you charge to 75% the taycan wins by >10 mins, but the etron is faster to 90 by a couple of minutes and about 15 minutes faster to 99%. Even though the Taycan peaks at 270kW vs 150kW for the etron. (Source for all of this is on various charging curve videos on Bjorn's channel).

To add 300km, the Taycan needs to charge above 90 and the Etron needs to charge to 99, so the Etron is faster for that comparison despite the much lower peak.

AndyBoBandy

When you have busses & HGV's with 200-300kWh batteries in them, then this sort of super fast charging will be probably needed..

graememk

AndyBoBandy wrote: »

When you have busses & HGV's with 200-300kWh batteries in them, then this sort of super fast charging will be probably needed..

But bigger batteries can naturally charge faster provided you can provide the power.

A 200kwh battery charging at 200kw is still only 1C

Eg a m3 long range charging at 150 kw is charging at 2C
At the v3 supercharger, can charge at 270kw which is 3.6C

It's not the big batteries that need the speed it's the normal size ones that do..

McGiver

unkel wrote: »

Well over double. That said, how important is this superfast charging really? It's nice to have for sure but after driving for 300km you'd need a break anyway. You'd barely make it to the toilet and back in 5 minutes. And if you want a coffee / snack too it would take at least 10 minutes and that's before stretching your legs or eating / drinking.

Anything quicker than 15 minutes per 300km wouldn't really add much value for me

Yeah of course, we the innovators (not really early adopters yet), agree. We are OK to wait 15-30 minutes with kids for loo, coffee etc. General population - not much so, they're impatient.

I tried to explain this to many people, to show that EVs are very well doable in today's Ireland, that you should/need to take a break anyway and the car can charge, but generally it's not getting a positive response.

Now, saying that was talking about the ID3 with one fella from Donegal and he asked me - can the ID3 get from Donegal to Galway City and back on one charge? It's a route he would be doing weekly or twice a month. It's 400 km round trip. You could maybe do it in summer, can't do it most of the year and needs 45 min stop for charging at 50 kW DC somewhere along the way. If there was a DC 100+ kW capable charger somewhere on the route then you could cut it to 25 minutes. I think it's still more than most people are willing to accept - people are impatient and always in a hurry.

Obviously, we know that no one is (or should be) undertaking any such journey without any sort of a break, and you could of course charge 11 kW AC for few hours while the car sits idle! But let's assume it's a roundtrip with minimum break, and then you see the issue is the infrastructure on all primary motorway and national roads - it doesn't exist in most of the country. Ionity is simply not enough as it stands - you would need at least 10 more hubs like these to make any sort of journeys possible and you'd still need to wait 20-ish minutes to charge on 100 kW+ DC.

So yeah, fast charging is really needed - Tesla know it that's why they've been doing what they've been doing.

McGiver

graememk wrote: »

It's not the big batteries that need the speed it's the normal size ones that do..

Exactly, and the consensus is that the battery packs will stabilise at 50-60 kWh in fact, not on massive packs. So the future is medium sized battery packs + super fast charging. Medium size packs keep the costs down and will allow EVs to be used by the masses. Large packs are too expensive and will be only for the rich / high-end segment.

ELM327

Medium sized segment now, will be small in a few years.
50-60kWh is simply not enough.

liamog

ELM327 wrote: »

Medium sized segment now, will be small in a few years.
50-60kWh is simply not enough.

I agree with this, the downward march of battery prices and the increase in energy density have got us to where we are. I think that's at least one more cycle of both required (taking us to 2025) before we start to see a stabilisation of EV range. Personally I think it's going to be somewhere between 80kWh and 100kWh to give a reliable range of 500km.

unkel

ELM327 wrote: »

I think we need to shift the focus from adding super fast charging at the start of a session, to maintaining high speeds throughout

Agree with that too. If I plug my Tesla in when near empty, it starts charging at 130kW but that speed starts dropping immediately. If you are not an EV nerd, this must looks very worrying. VW have done that much better with the etron which has a decent flat charging curve which makes a lot more sense if you want to get people to adopt to EVs

As McGiver rightly says, we are still only in the innovator stage in this country, not even early adopter yet.

ELM327

Hard to believe it's still in innovator stage, 10 years after the delivery of the first leafs here.

liamog

With 4.5% of new purchases, I don't think we are at the innovator's stage. I think products that have a 15/20 year expected life span should be judged on the adoption rate at the entry into the market rather than market penetration as a whole.

the_amazing_raisin

unkel wrote: »

Agree with that too. If I plug my Tesla in when near empty, it starts charging at 130kW but that speed starts dropping immediately. If you are not an EV nerd, this must looks very worrying. VW have done that much better with the etron which has a decent flat charging curve which makes a lot more sense if you want to get people to adopt to EVs

As McGiver rightly says, we are still only in the innovator stage in this country, not even early adopter yet.

Yeah I'd almost prefer if car designers went for a decent average charging speed over a very fast max speed.


The problem with the E-Tron for now is that you're paying a lot for battery capacity you can't use, all to get that great charging speed. At the moment, it's hard for that to be done in cheaper cars, but if batteries get much cheaper then it could be feasible

Black_Knight

unkel wrote: »

Agree with that too. If I plug my Tesla in when near empty, it starts charging at 130kW but that speed starts dropping immediately. If you are not an EV nerd, this must looks very worrying. VW have done that much better with the etron which has a decent flat charging curve which makes a lot more sense if you want to get people to adopt to EVs

As McGiver rightly says, we are still only in the innovator stage in this country, not even early adopter yet.

From what I've seen of the id3 and 4, VW have done poorly with coldgating so far. Another big concern for Joe soap spending big money on electric. Almost makes the savings on a basic 50kW charging in the enyaq look worth it if coldgating continues to impact the id4 (and I assume the enyaq) as much as it does.

KCross

Black_Knight wrote: »

From what I've seen of the id3 and 4, VW have done poorly with coldgating so far.

Are you basing it off Bjorn's Norweigan test at -25°C!

The ID cars have battery heating hardware included, its just the software isnt properly utilising it yet.

There is a software update coming that is supposed to address some battery heating stuff in the ID cars so we need to see how the tests fair out once thats applied... unfortunately we will be rolling into the summer by then so it could be next winter before we really find out.

McGiver

ELM327 wrote: »

Hard to believe it's still in innovator stage, 10 years after the delivery of the first leafs here.

Innovators are the first 2.5%.

What's the EV prbetration here? Definitely no more than 1%. I don't count PHEVs

Wasn't it some 11k EVs... Out of 2M+ cars.

corks finest

McGiver wrote: »

Innovators are the first 2.5%.

What's the EV prbetration here? Definitely no more than 1%. I don't count PHEVs

Wasn't it some 11k EVs... Out of 2M+ cars.

However, when it comes to plugin-hybrids and hybrids, Which? had some sharp words for car makers, saying that they are dramatically over-promising their cars’ running costs. For example, a BMW X5 40e PHEV plugin-hybrid, going by BMW’s claimed fuel economy figures, should only cost around €290 a year in fuel.

According to Which?, which tests PHEVs over a more gruelling course to determine their real-world fuel economy, that same X5 PHEV would actually cost you €1,500 in fuel costs in one year.

McGiver

ELM327 wrote: »

I agree Unkel. I think we need to shift the focus from adding super fast charging at the start of a session, to maintaining high speeds throughout - albeit slightly lower than peak.

Yes but that's all due to electrochemistry to protect the cells from thermal and other damage during fast charging. That's why the tapering, current tech can't sustain and maintain high C charging for long.

That's why all these new superfast charging cells are being developed, they could do what you say.

Say a cell like the StoreDot is designed for 10C superfast charging. With some safety margin etc your 50 kWh pack will be able to charge 7C on a 350 kW Ionity charger within minutes - e.g. 35 kW from 10% to 80% in 6 minutes.

And you really wouldn't need super large packs then.

McGiver

liamog wrote: »

I agree with this, the downward march of battery prices and the increase in energy density have got us to where we are. I think that's at least one more cycle of both required (taking us to 2025) before we start to see a stabilisation of EV range. Personally I think it's going to be somewhere between 80kWh and 100kWh to give a reliable range of 500km.

The trend has slowed down and the current Li-ion tech has not much further to go really in terms of capacity and lower price.

2010 - $1191 per kWh
2015 - $384
2016 - $295
2017 - $221
2018 - $181
2019 - $157
2020 - $137

So it could be both.
Larger “slow“ charging packs and medium fast charging packs may cost the same, eventually. Up to the consumer to pick the one suitable for them.

ELM327

McGiver wrote: »

Yes but that's all due to electrochemistry to protect the cells from thermal and other damage during fast charging. That's why the tapering, current tech can't sustain and maintain high C charging for long.

That's why all these new superfast charging cells are being developed, they could do what you say.

Say a cell like the StoreDot is designed for 10C superfast charging. With some safety margin etc your 50 kWh pack will be able to charge 7C on a 350 kW Ionity charger within minutes - e.g. 35 kW from 10% to 80% in 6 minutes.

And you really wouldn't need super large packs then.

That would be a change, but a 50kWh pack charged to 80% wouldnt have much range. You'd still be charging every 200km.


The only benefit I could see to this is if you can make the EV tech the same as fossil times, and just set 90% as the new 100%. 10-90% in 6 minutes in an 80kWh pack. That's fossil like range with fossil like refuel times.

McGiver wrote: »

The trend has slowed down and the current Li-ion tech has not much further to go really in terms of capacity and lower price.

2010 - $1191 per kWh
2015 - $384
2016 - $295
2017 - $221
2018 - $181
2019 - $157
2020 - $137

So it could be both.
Larger “slow“ charging packs and medium fast charging packs may cost the same, eventually. Up to the consumer to pick the one suitable for them.

As most charging is done at home on AC, I would suggest the former would suit more than the latter.

unkel

McGiver wrote: »

from 10% to 80% in 6 minutes.

And you really wouldn't need super large packs then.

Yes, we are in a small minority here, McGiver, but I also believe there is no reason why a cheap city car in future should have a 60kWh battery. 20-30kwh is plenty, these cars rarely do big trips and if they do, they need to stop once or twice for 10 minutes. That's perfectly acceptable if that would make their car cost €15k instead of €20k

liamog

McGiver wrote: »

The trend has slowed down and the current Li-ion tech has not much further to go really in terms of capacity and lower price.

I'm not seeing a slow down in the numbers you shared, '19 to '20 and '18' to '19 both have a 13% reduction, that's about on par with the forecasted 10% to 15% year on year reduction. Similarly if you look at density we're looking at around a 5% to 10% increase.

MJohnston

unkel wrote: »

Yes, we are in a small minority here, McGiver, but I also believe there is no reason why a cheap city car in future should have a 60kWh battery. 20-30kwh is plenty, these cars rarely do big trips and if they do, they need to stop once or twice for 10 minutes. That's perfectly acceptable if that would make their car cost €15k instead of €20k

I'd go further — there should be no cheap city cars in the not-so-distant future. If we can cleanse our city centres of private cars, there would be a real opportunity for a fleet of self-driving pods to ferry people to their in-city destinations.

Anyway...

the_amazing_raisin

MJohnston wrote: »

I'd go further — there should be no cheap city cars in the not-so-distant future. If we can cleanse our city centres of private cars, there would be a real opportunity for a fleet of self-driving pods to ferry people to their in-city destinations.

Anyway...

I don't think you're far off, look at the success of GoCar and E-Scooters in the past few years.


Mini-cars like the Citroen Ami could go a long way to boost this, although I still question the usefulness of something smaller than a VW Up, you'd want to carry a decent weekly shop at least


I think the biggest thing holding it back is legislation, our driving laws are built around the idea of owning a car, not renting one by the hour. E-Scooters are still illegal and I imagine the Ami will be treated as a road car even though you can run faster


We also have to confront the annoying truth that cities consume a lot of resources which generally get delivered by trucks and vans

ELM327

Private car ownership being removed is a step backwards. Consumers want convenience and despite go car being here for years, the shift has not happened. It won't happen as nothing beats the convenience of owning your own car.

liamog

Personally I won't give up private transportation until there is a solution for mobile personal storage

Silent Running

ELM327 wrote: »

Private car ownership being removed is a step backwards. Consumers want convenience and despite go car being here for years, the shift has not happened. It won't happen as nothing beats the convenience of owning your own car.

When I lived in Dublin I probably could have given up car ownership, but didn't want to.

Now I live in rural Ireland, there's no way in hell that I could get by without owning a car.

McGiver

McGiver wrote: »

Yeah of course, we the innovators (not really early adopters yet), agree. We are OK to wait 15-30 minutes with kids for loo, coffee etc. General population - not much so, they're impatient.

I tried to explain this to many people, to show that EVs are very well doable in today's Ireland, that you should/need to take a break anyway and the car can charge, but generally it's not getting a positive response.

Now, saying that was talking about the ID3 with one fella from Donegal and he asked me - can the ID3 get from Donegal to Galway City and back on one charge? It's a route he would be doing weekly or twice a month. It's 400 km round trip. You could maybe do it in summer, can't do it most of the year and needs 45 min stop for charging at 50 kW DC somewhere along the way. If there was a DC 100+ kW capable charger somewhere on the route then you could cut it to 25 minutes. I think it's still more than most people are willing to accept - people are impatient and always in a hurry.

Obviously, we know that no one is (or should be) undertaking any such journey without any sort of a break, and you could of course charge 11 kW AC for few hours while the car sits idle! But let's assume it's a roundtrip with minimum break, and then you see the issue is the infrastructure on all primary motorway and national roads - it doesn't exist in most of the country. Ionity is simply not enough as it stands - you would need at least 10 more hubs like these to make any sort of journeys possible and you'd still need to wait 20-ish minutes to charge on 100 kW+ DC.

So yeah, fast charging is really needed - Tesla know it that's why they've been doing what they've been doing.

You need to charge like a petrol does. Refuel in 5 minutes, then move so someone else can. Even motorway services now sometimes have waiting. Imagine if every refuel was 30 minutes what the line waiting would be

ELM327

liamog wrote: »

Personally I won't give up private transportation until there is a solution for mobile personal storage

Silent Running wrote: »

When I lived in Dublin I probably could have given up car ownership, but didn't want to.

Now I live in rural Ireland, there's no way in hell that I could get by without owning a car.

From my cold dead hands will they pull my private car ownership.